Is The Mortuary Collection some lively October entertainment, or is it dead on arrival?
Every year, some of the most ghastly and mean-spirited horror I watch comes from anthology films. I think that’s partly a function of the limited run time of each story. It is much harder to foster a real connection between character and audience during a twenty-minute sequence than it is for an entire film, and so filmmakers feel more emboldened to really stick it to their protagonists. Likewise, there are only so many ways to make an impact in such a short story, and so going for the visceral gut punch of a particularly gross or over-the-top kill seems to be a go-to technique. Finally, many of these anthologies are comprised of simple morality plays, built off of the legacy of the pre-comics code EC horror comics, where the formula is followed without deviation: Introduce a character and establish their fatal flaw, punish them in a way that is comically overstated yet ironically tied to that flaw. The Mortuary Collection knows the rules, and it follows them with glee.
The titular mortuary provides the framing device for the short films. The undertaker, deliciously played by Clancy Brown as a cross between Tim Curry and Angus Scrimm from Phantasm, has a seemingly endless supply of ghoulish tales to tell. He is joined by Caitlin Custer who is ostensibly a job applicant, but seems much more interested in discussing the finer metatextual points of Brown’s stories than scoring the job. As you would expect in a movie like this, the stories follow the same pattern of introducing the character, then the flaw, then the punishment, and they progressively become better and more elaborate as the film goes on. The first section is barely a story at all, but simply an amuse bouche of terror to establish the pattern. The second follows a frat bro who ends up regretting his latest sexual conquest. It is fun if mostly predictable, and nails the ironic part of the equation. The last two tales are the ones that are the most impactful and twisted. The third story involves a grim exploration of “…’till death do us part”, and wrings a lot of discomfort around its escalating treatment of a man struggling with a new bride that requires around-the-clock care. It turns into a Tell-Tale Heart type of allegory, and Poe is a fitting inspiration for this type of material. Finally, we land on a deviation from the proceedings as Custer takes a turn relating her tale to Brown. Her story is a super fun deconstruction of Halloween, or more precisely the “babysitter in peril” story that Halloween popularized. Throwing children in harm’s way has long been a staple of scary movies as a way to ratchet up the tension, but the genre has traditionally been a bit squeamish on actually following up on that threat. A film like The Mortuary Collection, however, wears its endangerment of pre-teen characters like a badge of honor. It reminds me, in tone, a lot of Tales of Halloween, an anthology I reviewed a few years back. That’s yet another signifier that makers of anthology horror feel more liberated to unleash their darker instincts than those who tell feature-length stories.
The Mortuary Collection was a good time. The other great thing about horror anthologies is that they are typically made by people who really love the genre. One thing I admired about this film was the singular vision and visual flair of director Ryan Spindell. A lot of the time, you have multiple directors with varying points of view and visual styles represented in this type of film, but the consistency of a single director adds to the experience. I also appreciate that there are really only five stories, and that includes the story we follow in the larger wraparound segments. It allows Spindell to right-size each tale and gives the latter entries the space to breathe that they require. There are a few complaints I could levy against the movie, and a couple of sub-par jump scares and CGI monstrosities, but overall I feel like this is the perfect Halloween comfort food for the season.
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